Escape The Dark (Book 1): Dark Tides

by Fawkes, K. M.

  “Go,” Adam hissed. “Go now, Cody.”

  An agonizing pause. Then Cody pulled the cord and started the engine up again, and the tender tore out of the harbor and toward the yacht, bouncing across the waves.

  Clear, cool air smacked Adam in the face as they went. It felt clean. Safe. Uninfected. He had made the right choice, he thought. He had done the only thing he could do. He had kept himself and Cody safe. He couldn’t be responsible for anybody else, not with things the way they were.

  But a scream chased them through the night air.

  “Burn in hell, you bastards!”

  Chapter 10

  The yacht was quiet now that the number of people on board had been cut in half. Adam had the entire third deck to himself for the moment. Artem was in the control center, sailing the yacht further out into the Pacific than they’d gone thus far. This had been Cody’s suggestion, but nobody had argued. After seeing the couple on the rowboat, after being forced to leave them behind, Adam felt anxious about the idea of staying close to shore. The other boats that had been at the dock a few weeks ago were all gone now. Chances were they were around here somewhere. And if the passengers on those boats ran into trouble, if they started to run out of supplies or if they realized that someone on their boat was infected, they’d be likely to come for Cody’s yacht.

  Best to be alone, where no one else could see them. Best to see nothing but water on all sides.

  Sara had gone to sleep when Cody and Adam had returned to the yacht—it was still the middle of the night, after all—and Adam had tried to do the same, but he wasn’t able to empty his mind enough to drift off. The scream that had followed them from the rowboat when they’d driven the tender away, when they’d decided not to help, echoed in his mind.

  He had left those people to die.

  It had been the right choice. The risk of bringing them aboard had just been too great. Adam didn’t regret the decision he’d made. But the fact that he’d had to make it was like a knife in his gut, twisting agonizingly.

  I didn’t kill them, he told himself firmly.

  Doesn’t matter. You could have saved them. They’re still dead because of you.

  Unable to escape from that thought, he had gotten out of bed and gone out onto the open air part of the third deck. Here he had lain down upon one of the couches and stared up at the stars for a while, contemplating the state of the world. The stars Adam could see from here were the same stars everyone on his half of the globe could see. But how many people was that? How many were left out there? And where were they? What were the safe places now that the hospitals had become the sites of greatest danger in the world? Where did people go to feel secure?

  Some were on boats, like he was. But that couldn’t be very many. Perhaps some had locked themselves in underground bunkers or barricaded themselves in airtight buildings. It was possible that people were surviving that way. But the problem with all these ideas was that if one person—just one!—in a secure space happened to be carrying the virus, everyone else would catch it too.

  Adam was willing to bet there were underground bunkers that had become tombs over the last few weeks, that were now full of corpses the way the sea near the pier had probably been full of bodies.

  What a fucking nightmare.

  Sleep seemed unlikely to come tonight. Adam got to his feet and went down the stairs to the first deck, thinking that maybe a drink of water would help him relax.

  But to his surprise, he found Cody on the first deck, still awake, staring off into the black. His friend was sitting with his feet in the hot tub and his elbows braced on his knees, chin in his hands. Adam filled a glass with water, headed over to the tub, and took a seat beside him.

  “You can’t sleep either, huh?” he asked.

  Cody shook his head. He inhaled sharply, and Adam heard a shudder in his breath.

  “Are you crying?” Adam asked.

  Cody turned away a little, clearly embarrassed.

  “Hey…” Adam reached out and rested a hand on his friend’s shoulder. “It’s okay, y’know? I’m not going to judge you or anything. I get it. This is seriously fucked.”

  Cody nodded, dropped his hands from his face, and laced his fingers together, gripping tightly. He looked like he was hanging onto something. Maybe he’s just hanging onto his last nerve.

  Adam scooted a little closer and slung his arm around his friend’s shoulders. “It’s been kind of a hell of a day,” he said. “I’ve been thinking about them too.”

  Cody looked up. His face was lined with tear tracks. “You have?”

  “Of course.”

  “I thought you hated them.”

  “What? Who are you talking about?”

  “The others,” Cody said. “Krista and Duane and Max. And Ray. Is that not who you meant?”

  “Well…no,” Adam said. “I was talking about that couple we saw, in that rowboat. The ones we had to leave behind. I haven’t been able to get my mind off them.”

  “Oh,” Cody said.

  “I guess I assumed that was what you were upset about,” Adam said.

  Cody shook his head. “I think…I mean, we did the right thing there, didn’t we?”

  “I don’t know about right,” Adam said. “We did what we had to do to survive. That’s the best we could do, I think.”

  Cody nodded. “That’s what I think too,” he said. “And we could torture ourselves about it, but…well, but who would that really help? It wouldn’t save them, would it?”

  “No.”

  “I know I sound cold.”

  “You don’t,” Adam said. “You sound like you’re doing what you have to do to survive.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “If we let ourselves get pulled under by the weight of things like that, the choices we have to make to keep ourselves going, it’ll kill us. We need to cope with the fact that sometimes we’re going to have to leave people behind. If we let it hurt us too much, we won’t be able to do it the next time we need to.”

  Cody shivered a little at that. “God, I hope there isn’t a next time, though.”

  “Me too,” Adam agreed, and that horrible scream rang through his head again.

  Burn in hell, you bastards!

  The two of them sat quietly for a long moment. Adam allowed the presence of his friend at his side to reassure him. Whatever happened next, they wouldn’t be alone. There was comfort in that. Things were undoubtedly horrific right now, but he couldn't even begin to imagine how much worse they would be if he had to face them alone. He thought back to the weeks he’d spent in his apartment with nothing but the TV for company. Having people to share ideas with, people to make plans with, people to do something as small as say hello to every morning, made all the difference in the world.

  “Do you think they’re going to die?” Cody asked after a stretch. “Krista and Duane and Max, I mean.”

  Adam deliberated. The honest answer was yes. He couldn’t see how anyone could survive for long on the mainland.

  “I hope not,” he said finally.

  “I know you didn’t like them,” Cody said.

  “Not much,” Adam agreed. “But I didn’t hate them, Cody. I certainly wouldn’t want them dead.”

  “They were my friends,” Cody said, and in the light of the moon Adam could make out a tear glistening on his cheek. “They are my friends.”

  “I know.”

  “You know, everyone I knew rushed right out to get that nanotech,” Cody said. “When it was first on the market, when we all thought it was the new Holy Grail. The cost didn’t matter, not to us. We were executives and self-made billionaires. I spent more on this goddamn boat than the injection cost. I could have gotten it. If I’d wanted it, I could have gotten it.”

  “Why didn’t you get it?” Adam asked.

  Cody hung his head. “I didn’t trust it,” he said quietly. “I thought it was too good to be true. How could it be true? An injection that could cure everything? I wanted
…I wanted to see it work first. I wanted proof.”

  “That was the right call,” Adam said. “I made the same decision, you know? I didn’t want it either.”

  But Cody shook his head. “You don’t understand,” he said. “When my friends—the people I knew—when they talked about getting it, I encouraged them. I told them they should. I told them we were privileged because we could afford it, and who knew how long it would be before the government started making people jump through all kinds of hoops. I always said I thought it was a good idea. I never told anyone I thought it was shady.”

  Adam felt as though his stomach had turned to lead. “Because you wanted to see what would happen,” he said quietly. “You wanted somebody else to be the guinea pig.”

  “And they were.” Cody choked on a sob. “All of them. All my friends. The people I spent every Friday night with. They talked to me, and then they went and got the tech. And now they’re dead.”

  A gust of night air blew. Adam shivered. “You know that isn’t your fault,” he said quietly. “It’s not your fault, what happened to them. We all knew that the nanotech wasn’t risk-free. Some people took the chance and some didn’t. You can’t blame yourself.”

  “Yeah, maybe,” Cody agreed. “But…but does it really matter? They’re gone now, isn’t that the point?”

  “Yeah,” Adam said. “I guess it is.”

  “I didn’t think they’d really leave, you know?” Cody said. “Duane and everyone, I mean. I thought they’d change their minds at the last minute.”

  “You didn’t want them to go, did you?”

  “No,” said Cody. “I thought…”

  “You thought what?”

  “I don’t know. I guess it’s stupid. I thought that the eight of us, out here on the boat, that we had something. That we were in it together, you know? We left the mainland together, we survived things together. That should unite people, right?”

  Adam made a noncommittal sound. In truth, he didn’t think the eight of them had survived much of anything together. The hard times had been suffered by the people who remained on dry land. Life on the yacht had been pretty much a nonstop party, and there wasn’t much in that to bond over.

  And yet, he did feel a closeness to the people on this yacht. To Artem and Sara, at least, who had sat beside him and listened to the news as it came over the radio. And although he had a preexisting friendship with Cody, he felt closer to him now than he ever had. “I guess the others didn’t feel that way,” he said finally.

  Cody nodded. “I really thought we were going to get through this together,” he said. “I thought we had each other’s backs.”

  “They panicked, that’s all,” Adam said. “They panicked, and they wanted to go to their families. It’s understandable, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah, it is,” Cody agreed. “It’s just…well, I thought of us as a family.” He looked down at his hands. “I didn’t think any of us would leave the others. But they really were just here for the party, weren’t they? They didn’t take any of this seriously.”

  “I thought you didn’t either,” Adam said.

  “Maybe not at first,” Cody admitted. “It’s hard to believe. But I think I just threw myself so hard into partying because I didn’t want to think about it.”

  “I can relate to that,” Adam said.

  “It must have been hell for you,” Cody said. “Being around all these drugs…going through the same fear and loss that the rest of us were dealing with.”

  “It hasn’t been easy.”

  “I’m really sorry, Adam.”

  “It’s all right,” Adam said, and he found that it was. “I know it’s been hard on you too.”

  “They all had someone to go back for,” Cody said, threading his toes through the surface of the hot tub’s water. “They all had friends and family they cared about more than us. More than me.”

  And you don’t, Adam thought but did not say aloud. Cody’s friends, such as they were, had all chosen to get the nanotech injection. Everyone he’d cared for, everyone who’d cared for him, was dead.

  “All but you,” Cody said, turning to Adam. “You stuck by me. I know Artem and Sara aren’t here for me. For them, it’s about the safety of the boat. But you—”

  “Well,” Adam said, “don’t get me wrong. I like being safe too.”

  “But you care if I live or die,” Cody said.

  “Yeah,” Adam acknowledged. “I do.”

  Cody gave a long, shuddering exhale. “It’s terrifying to think that someday we might live in a world where nobody cares if we live or die, isn’t it?”

  “That won’t happen,” Adam said. “As long as I’m alive, I’ll give a damn about you, I promise.”

  “Yeah. Same.” Cody nudged Adam with his shoulder. “It’s a weird thing to promise.”

  “Sure is.”

  “What do you think is going to happen?” Cody asked. “I mean, in the long term. Do you think they’ll ever get the virus under control?”

  “I have no idea,” Adam said.

  “What are we going to do?” Cody asked.

  “We’ll just have to take it one day at a time, I guess,” Adam said.

  Cody shivered a little. “I’m scared,” he admitted.

  “I think we all are.”

  “I thought…I don’t know. I thought it couldn’t touch me, you know? Nothing ever seems to. I’ve been seeing things on the news all my life—natural disasters, financial recessions…but it never impacts my life.”

  “You know that’s because you’re rich, right?” Adam said. “Things like that always affect poor people first, because there’s so little standing between them and disaster.”

  Cody nodded. “I guess I knew that. I just thought this might be similar. That I could really just go away on my boat and have fun until it was over.”

  “You know, I think right now the best thing to do is to try and stay in the moment,” Adam said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, we’re alive,” Adam said. “We’re in a safe place. We’re far away from the infected, and we have plenty of supplies. Things are looking bleak out there, it’s true, but if we try to keep our minds on the here and now, we’re doing all right.”

  “You think?”

  “We’re still going to be here tomorrow,” Adam said. “We’re still going to be here next week. We’re getting by.”

  Cody seemed to brighten a little. “You’re right,” he said. “We’ve still got it better than some, don’t we?”

  “I’d say we’ve got it better than most,” Adam said.

  The idea that there was someone worse off than he was seemed to bolster Cody. He slipped off the side of the hot tub and down into the water and rested his arms on the side. “It’s still awfully pretty out there,” he said. “Don’t you think so?”

  Adam glanced out at the glassy, empty water, then back at his friend.

  “I think it looks like a wasteland,” he said.

  Chapter 11

  June 4

  Adam quickly settled into the new routine of life on the ship with only four passengers. Now that the drugs were gone, now that Cody’s friends and Ray had departed, the entire atmosphere had changed and the days had taken on a whole new rhythm.

  Sara no longer cooked for the group. By unspoken consensus, everyone seemed to have agreed that there was no point in pretending to have a chef aboard. No one was here to do a job. No one was here as an employee of Cody Granger. They were all here as equals, trying to survive.

  Artem still drove, though, mostly because he was the only one who really knew how. Cody had a vague idea of what the various controls did, but he had never taken the time to really learn. As for Adam, he spent a few hours every day in the control room talking to the captain and watching him operate the boat, but he knew he would never be able to do it with the level of skill Artem possessed.

  Still, he had to try, because you never knew when something might happen. You never knew wh
en someone might be taken out of commission. So day after day he returned to the control room, and day after day he watched and tried to absorb the information.

  When he wasn’t in the control room, Adam made an effort to go down to the first deck and socialize with his shipmates. Since no one lived on this level, it had become the place to go for meals, conversations, and general interactions with other human beings. Cody could often be found in the hot tub, leaning on the deck, as he had the night he and Adam had spoken here, and staring off into the distance. Adam wondered if his friend still found the view beautiful.

  Sometimes they dropped anchor and stayed in one place for days at a time. When the ship was anchored, Artem usually seized the opportunity to retire for his cabin and sleep for extended stretches of time. Although he knew it was important to keep the lines of communication open with his shipmates, Adam usually took these times as an excuse to hide out in his own cabin. It was a relief, on occasion, to get away from Artem’s cold calculations, from Cody’s morose slump, from Sara, who carried the radio with her everywhere she went now and always had it turned on so that Adam could hear doom being forecast every time she entered a room.

  In his room, things were restful, and even though he could never forget what was going on in the outside world, he could ignore it for a while. He could lie on his bed and close his eyes and just feel the rocking of the ocean.

  But six weeks after their crew had divided itself in half, an unpleasant landmark was reached.

  Adam wandered into the pantry behind the kitchen. Since Sara had given up cooking, he and the others had been fending for themselves when it came to food. Mindful of the fact that rations wouldn’t last forever, Adam typically ate a granola bar for breakfast and left it at that. But now, when he pulled the box off the shelf, he saw that it was empty.

  He leaned out into the kitchen. “Does anyone know if there are more granola bars?”

  “I took the last one,” Artem said. “I’ve only eaten half, though. We can split the remainder if you like.”